Analysis on Obama's Eulogy for Mandela

Advances in Language and Literary Studies ISSN: 2203-4714 www.alls.aiac.org.au Analysis on Obama’s Eulogy for Mandela Jingming Chen* School of Foreign Language, Pingxiang University, Pingxiang City, Jiangxi Province 337000, China Corresponding Author: Jingming Chen, E-mail: [email protected] ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history This paper aims to analyse Obama’s eulogy for Mandela. After careful reading and analysis, the Received: October 09, 2018 eulogy was found to have met al. the requirements of an eulogy, such as the two expectations, Accepted: December 18, 2018 and five functions, which are the focus of the study of this paper. Meanwhile, the life story about Published: February 28, 2019 both Mandela and Obama have been briefly examined, and their similarity in their experience of Volume: 10 Issue: 1 a multiracial society explains Obama’s sympathy with Mandela’s life, and their common view Advance access: January 2019 on a multiracial society in which all the people can enjoy freedom, equality, and democracy, no matter what races they belong to. Conflicts of interest: None Funding: None Key words: Obama, Eulogy for Mandela, Discourse Analysis A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE APARTHEID South Africa is mainly the history of White’s colonization HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA AND THE LIFE OF on the Black and other colored people living in the country. MANDELA Under the influence of the idea of the white suprema- cy, and in order to intensify and ensure the benefit of the The Apartheid History of South Africa white people, and though some certain forms of segregation In Africa, before the European white colonizers came, there or apartheid has existed since the beginning of the colony, had already been the indigenous people who had lived there Apartheid was adopted as a formal policy by the South Afri- for thousands years. In Africa, the first or the earliest liv- can government after the election of the National Party (NP) ing people were the San and Khoekhoe peoples (otherwise at the 1948 general election. according to the Apartheid pol- known individually as the Bushmen and Hottentots or Khoik- icy,all the colonized peoples in Africa must see them as an hoi; collectively called the Khoisan). Both were resident in inferior race, and, therefore, all of them must be separated the southern tip of the continent for thousands of years be- from the whites, must live separately in the poorer rural area. fore its written history began with the arrival of European For example, The Group Areas Acts of 1950 and 1986 forced seafarers. And these indigenous peoples had lived a very about 1.5 million Africans to move from cities to rural town- peaceful life, made a successful living by hunting, herding or ships, where they lived in abject poverty under repressive farming, and had been very harmonious with nature of that laws, and must not have the right to vote, for example, black continent. But all of such harmonious lives were suddenly voters were removed from the voter rolls in 1936. disturbed by that arrival of the European invaders beginning in 1652, when The Dutch East India Company landed the first European settlers on the Cape of Good Hope. From that The Life of Mandela year, and especially after the year 1795 when the British ar- Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) rived and occupied the Cape colony, the western white has was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, political launched a long term of colonization of this South Africa leader, peace activist, and philanthropist who served as Pres- land. The white saw them as the human selected by the God, ident of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the coun- so they thought them superior to the indignant people, hence try’s first black head of state and the first elected in a fully they believed they had the right to “lead” the black people representative democratic election. His government focused to a higher level of culture and civilization. So the history of on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by tackling institu- Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.10n.1p.73 74 ALLS 10(1):73-76 tionalised racism and fostering racial reconciliation. Ideo- months before Obama was born. (Ibid). But Obama’s parents logically an African nationalist and socialist, he served as divorced in March 1964 when his father Obama Sr. came President of the African National Congress(ANC) party back to Kenya where he had his third marriage. After that, from 1991 to 1997. In his Eulogistic Speech, Obama traced his mother married a Indonesian students who came from the course of Mandela’s life: from his childhood herding cat- Indonesian and studied in America. Two years later after tle to the legal training that shaped a liberation struggle as they married, his mother with him followed her Indonesian great as that of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. husband to Indonesia where he studied at the local language He retold the story of Mandela’s trial in 1964, his decades (as school and elementary school from age six to ten, hence the long as 27years) in prison, and his astonishing presidency as ability to speak Indonesian fluently. When Obama was 11 in the great reconciler of a country few believed could ever heal 1971, he came back to Honolulu to live with his maternal from the violence and injustice of apartheid. So, Mandela grandparents. devoted his whole life to the fight against the reality of the So the family background of Obama is diversified and white’s repression and the apartheid, and to the emancipation extended one, just as Obama himself put it, “It’s like a lit- of the black people and other colored people in South Africa. tle mini-United Nations”, and he said. “I’ve got relatives For example, in 1952, Mandela as one of the major leaders, who look like Bernie Mac, and I’ve got relatives who look he organized and led the Defiance Campaign against apart- like Margaret Thatcher. That is, Obama has a half sister from heid, and At a Durban rally on 22 June, Mandela addressed his Indonesian stepfather, and seven half-siblings from his an assembled crowd of 10,000, initiating the campaign pro- Kenyan father. And Obama also has roots in Ireland; he tests, for which he was arrested and briefly interned in Mar- met with his Irish cousins in Moneygall in May 2011. the shall Square prison; the arrest and the famous Rivonia Trial multi-racial background of his family background, together (1962-1964), after which he and other fellow activists were with his experiences of a variety of cultures in a climate of sentenced to life imprisonment on 12 June 1964, and in his mutual respect in Honolulu Hawaii, has became an integral 27 years’ prison life, he never stopped his fighting; and in part of his world view, and a basis for the values that he hold 1991, after his unconditional release from the prison by the most dear, which also shows the relationship and similarity newly elected president De Clerk, he, at the Cape City Hall, between him and Mandela in the view of the multiraces in gave the speech, declaring his commitment to peace and rec- a community or country. Obama, as introduced as “our very onciliation with the white minority. all of these events have son of the African soil” in Mandela’s memorial service, said, built him as one of the great political figures in South Africa. “It is hard to eulogize any man,” Obama began, “to cap- Mandela was died on 5 December 2013, at the age of ture in words not just the facts and the dates that make a life, 95, accompanied by his family.The present president Zuma but the essential truth of a person – their private joys and sor- publicly announced his death on television,proclaiming ten rows; the quiet moments and unique qualities that illuminate days of national mourning, and on 10 December 2013 and someone’s soul.” at Johannesburg’s FNB Stadium, the government held a And as most people know, during his quiet moments be- memorial service which about 90 representatives of foreign fore he ran up for the president, Obama hung several pho- states attended. By the time of his death, with his great- tos on the wall of his Senate office. Unlike other politicians ness in political career and his charismatic personality, with longer careers, the wall was not full of grinning photos such as high image consciousness,loyalty, inclusiveness,- of himself with other luminaries. Instead there were icon- simpleness, friendliness, and even a mischievous sense of ic photos of Gandhi, King, and Lincoln: the three historic humor, within South Africa Mandela was widely consid- figures that he cited in his Mandela eulogy. So we know, ered both “the father of the nation”and “the founding father that, from the very beginning, Obama has regarded Mandela of democracy”.Outside of South Africa, he was a “global and Gandhi, King, and Lincoln as his icons who share with icon”,with the scholar of South African studies Rita Bar- him the idea that all races should be equal, mutual-respected, nard describing him as “one of the most revered figures of peacefully co-existed in a society. Also from his early life our time”.(Ibid) when he was still a college student, he showed his sympathy with South African blacks and Mandela’s struggle, and his hatred of the Apartheid policy.

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